Well here we go. As many of you know, since we last posted from the Rolex Middle Sea Race in October 2015, we continued to have a great run with our Farr 60 Prospector. After a well-earned third place in that race, we shipped her from Italy to the Caribbean where she raced the 2016 Caribbean season both on charter and with our partners. We closed the season with a solid win in the Maxi II class at the Les Voiles de Saint Barth regatta beating both Ian Walker and Bouwe Bekking who finished first and second in last year’s Volvo Ocean Race. Not bad. To say we had a good time in St. Barths is an understatement of epic proportions. And it made us hungry for more.
Alas, while we loved Prospector, she was showing her age and we decided that it was time to send her on to the next owner who could find out like we did what a great boat she is. While we definitely had the fever to keep going with another boat, we decided we would take some time to maybe let the fever break. That idea lasted all of five seconds.
Even before Prospector was hauled out of the water in June, we had already looked at more than a dozen boats both on the internet and in person. After a bit of flirtation with a smaller boat, a TP52 or maybe even a multihull, the continuing partners Dave Lawn Dart Siwicki (or as I call him, Too Deep Dave), Larry Pol Pot Landry and your humble correspondent decided on our “design brief”. Design brief is fancy yacht talk for what we wanted the boat to be able to do. It’s pretty simple really: we wanted a more modern boat that can plane downwind, is safe and comfortable for long ocean races (comfortable being a relative term), can compete well day racing, has a decent head and navigation station for said ocean racing and can be sailed competitively by our mixed team of Corinthians and pro sailors. It’s so simple that it fits in a sentence but very hard to find in the real world with our budget.
In looking around, we kept coming back to a single boat, a Mills 68 built by New England Boatworks in 2008 originally named Alegre and now named Caol Ila R. The boat had been impeccably maintained by both owners and was constantly upgraded. She has an unbelievable race record. The designer Mark Mills designed White Witch as well so we liked that. The more people we talked to, the more we kept hearing that this would be a terrific boat for us. Oh…and she is conveniently located in Sardinia.
As is typical of Larry, once we figured out this boat could work for us, he set about making it happen. If it wasn’t complicated enough buying a boat in Europe from a European owner with virtually everyone on vacation for the month of August over there, Larry decided we could not only buy the boat but be ready to race our first event at the Maxi Yacht Cup hosted by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Porto Cervo, Italy. After all, the boat was already in Sardinia! We made a After a quick trip to Sardinia in mid August to test sail the boat – let’s just say we were pretty impressed – followed by our team taking the boat for a little shakedown cruise to Albania, for tax reasons, here we are, ready to go with a new Prospector on a new adventure.
Our crack team of Tery Glackin, Quinn Tobin and Lucien Moore have been in Europe for a month working tirelessly getting all this done. Our heartfelt thanks to them. They were recently joined by the inimitable Scotty Tompkins and the rest of us will fly over later this week for a few days of practice followed by the regatta start next Sunday. While it has all happened super quickly, we have gathered a top notch crew to sail with us including sailing legend Peter Isler and the designer of the boat Mark Mills. We have some new pro sailors with terrific pedigrees including Volvo experience also sailing with us to help us learn to sail what is definitely a big step up from the old Prospector. Veterans from the Transat that are back for another round include: Matt Landry, Henry Little, Tim Keyworth and Andrew Wolf joined by newer crew members that have sailed more recently on the old Prospector, Stuart McNeil and Dennis Willette. All in all, it will take 20 of us to get this boat around the course.
While we know we have a very fast boat and some outstanding sailors on our team, this will be our first event and so we are tempering our expectations but not our competitive spirit. No matter what, the setting will certainly be photogenic and we will post pictures and updates as the week progresses. We are proud to represent the Shelter Island Yacht Club and the New York Yacht Club sailing what it is one of the marquee events in the world of yacht racing. While it is impossible to predict the result, it is possible to know already from a deep reservoir of recent experience that we will have fun. More later.
Click on the link below to see a Flickr collection of pictures of the yacht in her previous incarnations as Allegre and Caol Ila R prepared for us by our yacht broker and good friend Bill Titus.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nandjnewport/albums/72157668346721365
We will get some photos of our own up soon.
Freeze Dried Dreams
Every ocean race is scenic in its own way. The Transatlantic has the vast ocean. Bermuda has the dramatic color changes as you cross the Gulf Stream. They are pretty to be sure but Rolex Middle Sea is unique in our experience. The sheer beauty of the Island of Sicily and the associated out islands is really hard to describe. The water is deep right to the shore and it draws you in. We have sailed hard by little fishing villages and soaring cliffs. Dramatic lighthouses winking their warning as you sail by close enough to nearly touch them.
Larry writes eloquently about the complexities of our sailing routes and the navigational challenges; of which there are many on a course like this. I have been chosen as the lifestyle reporter today which I suspect is a dubious honor. When asked about distance racing, I am always asked two things: what do you eat and how do you sleep?
First we eat freeze dried food to save weight and for simplicity. Water is very heavy so we make our own from seawater and then Collette sets about boiling it on our camp stove in a huge pot. With these modest tools she produces Mexican chicken, beef stroganoff, chicken teriyaki, and lasagna. These are names only as the real differentiator is color. In the morning everyone’s favorite is breakfast skillet. It is amazing the vast quantities of this extremely modest fare our young guns Scotty and Lucien can consume. It really is inhuman. They eat it morning, noon and night. They mix the leftovers together with hot sauce, ketchup and god knows what.
For sleeping, we all share bunks. Yep…it’s as unappealing as it sounds. Collette, Tery and Larry because of their uneven schedules get their own, which I guess is fair. There is a hierarchy in bunks and as a watch captain and owner, I get a good one. Tim Keyworth is my bunk mate and a better one I could not have. He even leaves a chocolate on my pillow after my evening watch.The combination, however, of freeze dried food and interrupted sleep patterns produces two side effects: crazy dreams and gas. I won’t belabor the second. You get it. Closed up boat, 14 men. The dreams, however, are an endless source of conversation. I always say dreams are like mix tapes; no one wants to hear yours but out here once you have run through every line in nearly every movie (Talladega Nights is a huge favorite), other people’s dreams do take on a certain level of interest. Scotty in particular has an exceptionally unique dream cycle that can be both enormously amusing and slightly disturbing at the same time.
We are sailing though and that takes priority. Everyone says this race has a “bit of everything”. To which we nod knowingly and say you have to be prepared. Well it really does. We have had less than zero wind to the point where driving a nail into your skull with a hammer would be more fun. We have had some gorgeous sailing in 15 knots jib reaching thru the islands. Last night we had a hard beat in 20 knots of breeze with our (gasp) foul weather gear on.
As I write we are approaching Lampedusa Island off the coast of Tunisia. It is the foothold to Europe that many of the migrants from North Africa and beyond try to reach in search of a better life. Sadly many don’t make it. We just saw a patrol boat out on the horizon and it doesn’t escape me the juxtaposition of us racing by in expensive yachts with so many, so nearby in desperate straits.
We press on. As night gets ready to fall, for the third time we are fighting for a podium position. Larry has put us in the right spots, the wind Gods have smiled on us more than they have frowned, the crew has sailed well and Ricky Bobby has kept us motivated. We can nearly see Malta and a few malt beverages but first another long night of freeze dried dreams.
A Busy and Productive Overnight
It is a beautiful morning on the Tyrrhenian Sea. We are abeam of
Palermo and well on our way to Capo St. Vito, which is 40 miles ahead.
We have covered 84 miles of the leg from Strombolio to Capo St. Vito
since our last post.
It was a busy and productive overnight. We began the leg in a 10 not
easterly with the A2 up sailing just north of the rhumb line at 9-10
knots boat speed. As some of us settled down to sleep, the on watch
was kept busy as we progressed through a variety of wind conditions,
each prompting a change in headsail. First we put up the spinnaker
staysail to add a little horsepower. A short while later the wind shifted
right and built a bit, so down came the A2 and SS and up went our
fractional code zeroor FRO. As the wind continued to veer right and
drop so we took down the FRO and put up a J1, our light air job. At
about 4am local, as the watches were changing the wind had built to
13-15 knots out of the southwest. Overpowered in these conditions we
downshifted changing headsail to our J2. At 6am, with the wind having
backed and dropped below 10 knots, we changed headsails again
striking the J2 and hoisting the J1.
For those of you keeping score at home that is A2 to A2/SS to J1 to J2 to
J1. Four headsail changes in 7 hours. Just before settling down for the
night we had talked through the wind forecast so we were ready for the
progression of changes in wind speeds and directions. But, being ready
is one thing. Shifting gears like that on a dark, nearly moonless night, is
another. The high spirited and amazingly talented Prospector crew
pulled off each change flawlessly. As each sail went up the next sail we
thought we would need was readied on deck. As each sail came down
it was flaked or packed and bagged, ready to go again if necessary. It all
sounds simple in theory. In practice it is anything but. Particularly
when the wind builds and Prospector gets wicked up making just
moving around a major endeavor. Kudos to our watch captains, Paul
and Tim and our bow men Matt and Stuart, for a flawless performance.
All that work paid off. We deliberately stayed a bit further north of the
rhumb line than our gang of eight, thinking there would be a bit more
wind further offshore. That turned out to be a good decision. Added
together with the stellar crew work we reeled the gang of 8 back in.
They have been going slower in lighter air trying to work down to our
line throughout the early morning hours. We have halved their leads
over us. We have also legged out on the smaller boats behind us,
benefiting from stronger winds and our longer waterline. We are now
4th in class and 11th in fleet. Big steps in the right direction.
We are just getting out of what we hope will be the last patch of light
air for the race. As we reach the northwest corner of Sicily and turn
southeast to Pantellaria we expect the wind to build into the high
teens/low twenties. Prospector conditions. Hopefully we can keep
moving up the leaderboards.
Hot late news flash. While this blog was being written and the crew
finished up their favorite breakfast, freeze dried breakfast skillet a la
Colette, enjoyed on deck in the bright morning sun we got latest sked
and learned we are now 4th in both IRC2 and IRC overall. We still have
just over half the race to go, so it is way too early to get too excited
about a result. But it still feels pretty good.
Game on!